My home is in the suburbs of the World's Most Livable City; here in Vancouver we have mild (albeit wet) weather, great shopping, tons of community events, a great urban centre and still mother nature is literally at our doorstep. Despite all the wondrousness that is Vancouver, I rarely make it out to enjoy everything the city has to offer. While my sister might spend the day at a local beach, I'm more than happy to hang out in the backyard or walk to the park with my boys.
Before you chalk my behaviour up to parenthood, I have a confession; I am a homebody and I always have been.
When I was in University, while my friends were out at the bar drinking and dancing, I was at home in my jammies watching a movie by myself and drinking a steaming cup of decaf. A girl at work recently told me that she was ecstatic that her three year old went to bed at 8pm because that meant she and her husband could easily go out after he was asleep; I laughed. The boy goes to be at 7pm and we rarely, if ever, go out after he's in bed, we're pretty happy to watch a movie on a weekend evening. I like to stay home and I'm OK with that.
That being said, I'd like to start taking advantage of the plethora of family friendly events that my community has to offer, and we are definitely making some headway. In celebration of public service week, our local works yard had a huge open house with opportunities to make birdfeeders, climb on all the 'mighty machines' the city has to offer and and there was even a play area in the middle of the works yard.
It was so great to get out as a family and enjoy some of the local community; I hope that we will continue to do more and more of these types of things and with summer just around the corner I'm confident we will. Does your family get out a lot or do you tend to spend most of your time close to home?
